1. Hangover
I was living that sweet college-kid life of attending more parties than classes and drinking more beer than water until my flatmate Saul returned from his weekend celebrations of pubs and clubs and found me on the floor with a bullet-sized hole in my forehead and bunch of blood all around me.
Obviously, I was hardcore out and wasn’t there to witness whatever face Saul made and hear whatever ideas ran through his drunken mind when he saw me on that carpet, but the conclusion to that horror was that he fed me his blood, and in doing so, pulled me back into the world of the living.
As I shook and coughed myself awake, I couldn’t have cared less about my miraculous rebirth (waking on the floor was a ritual to my style of partying). I rolled on the carpet (blindly, in my blood) wondering whether I should run for the toilet or just give up and puke out my insides right then and there. I felt sick and drowsy, hot and cold, and somewhat still trapped between reality and nightmare.
Begging God to let that wetness under my hands be just a spilled beer, I opened my eyes to a sight that replaced the twirling in my gut with annoyance and a desire to punch something.
Saul was right there, staring me down like some pretend dentist showcasing what a white smile was really ought to look like. That grin was the cornerstone of our tomfoolery. Whenever one of us did something embarrassing (remembering it or not) the other was sure to show up grinning like that to rub it in. It was a disgusting tradition, one that never made sense when hungover.
And on that night, Saul looked even more amused than usual.
I blinked a couple of times, dreading whatever story I was about to hear and sighed deeply from my lungs - hoping that my beer-breath would force Saul to retreat. But he stood quite immune.
“Well, morning, sleepy-head!” He all but shouted, so annoyingly chipper. Strangulation was what I was considering right then. “Or, you know...? Night, I guess.”
I rolled toward the window and back. It was indeed dark outside.
“What time is it?”
“About two.”
I tried to get up, but the dizziness slammed me right back down.
“It’ll get better in a moment,” Saul said in an unusually wise tone.
“Like hell it does...” I growled back. When it came to hangovers, I was at least as knowledgeable as he was.
He smirked and backed away. I could hear him land onto our sofa.
As he was keeping me wondering, instead of just telling me what I had been up to (for I had no memory of the night) I lifted my hands to my face with the plan to smell the liquid. But my muscles hard-stopped as my eyesight focused. I could see red, and I could also smell it. There was no doubt, it was blood.
A jilt of fear slashed through my organs, and my frightened brain made my hands test my gut and limbs for injuries. For a moment I even forgot that Saul was there.
“You’re fine!” He called carelessly, dragging the “fine” as if it was his catchphrase to a new sitcom he starred in. “It’s just the transition.”
“Transition to what?” I asked off-hand, focusing more on getting to my feet. I was certain he was setting up for a joke.
“To a vampire.”
I looked at him, blank-faced. “Vampire, huh?” The punch-line did not impress me. It was actually surprisingly unfunny.
But my lack of laughter didn’t make him try to explain the joke. Instead, he threw me a mirror.
“Check your forehead.”
That request made me sigh. There was no doubt in my mind that Saul had returned to the High School level of pranks and written something “clever” on my passed-out body.
But he hadn’t.
For a moment, I froze. And then I touched it (the bullet wound) and felt such pain I had to pull my fingers back. My wheels started spinning but my brain never got the chance to reason it out.
“And your teeth,” Saul called.
Slowly, I moved the mirror down. And... I could see nothing weird at all.
“Boo!” Saul appeared right behind me. And as the fear of the surprise ran through me, I could see my teeth turn into fangs.
Saul chuckled, his mascaraed eyes and slightly made up face appearing next to my deadly-pale one in the reflection.
“Don’t overthink it.” He spoke into my ear, “just say thank you!”
I pushed him the hell away and kept looking into the mirror. The fangs were there! Also, the wound.
As my mind offered me no answers, I was forced to turn back to Saul. He was again on the sofa, still enjoying the show.
“Say thank you... To you? Why?”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, because I turned you. Didn’t I?”
“And you could turn me because you’re a vampire?”
“Obviously.”
“A bloodsucking, killing and all that, vampire?”
He shrugged. “If you’d like to put it that way.”
“And you turned me into one as well?”
Saul got up, kind of grumpy but still smiling.
“You’re a lot whinier than I thought you’d be.”
“Well excuse me! I want to know what the hell’s going on!”
He parted his hands dramatically and hammered me with his words like I was some stupid kid. “You were human, right? Now you’re a vamp. It happens. This is life. You need a guidebook or something?”
I don’t know why, but I smiled. Shock, perhaps? Or still drunk?
“It happens, yeah?”
“Exactly.”
I surrendered, putting my hands up.
“Alright! It happens. What happens next?”
“Next?” He checked his watch. “Next, you’re gonna go wash your face, and then we’ll go get a drink.”
